Once you have made your nominal deposit to your poker room of choice (and played out any bonus) withdraw all your bankroll, which should now be more than $200. There may be some security hoops to jump through to get money released. Take care of them and then withdraw your funds.

The reason you got your free money bankroll up to $200 is because at that point you can get a very good first deposit bonus from the next site you deposit on.

The bonus at Full Tilt is 100% match up to $600, so you'll get a $200 bonus to clear if you deposit $200 with bonus code EXTRACHIPS. If you just played break even poker while clearing the bonus, you'll have $200 profit in the bonus and a bankroll of $400.

You are now on the bonus trail. Start with the high % bonuses which have a relatively small maximum, as these require the smallest bankroll to max out. Remember, although there may be reload bonuses offered to you later, the first time deposits are one off deals, so if you cash in for only half the amount, you lose that extra bonus for ever. A little bit of patience building your bankroll at the start means you can get a whole lot more bonuses later.

If you've managed to play your roll to $400, the Cake bonus is 100% match up to $500 free, so by depositing $400, you'll get $400 in bonus dollars to play off, bringing your total bankroll to $800. (Note! You will also receive rakeback at Cake Poker for an extra bankroll boost!). Clearing the Cake bonus will put you at $800+ by playing break even poker and earning the bonus + rakeback and allows you to get the maximum bonus at just about any other site you join.

Step 9 - $800+!!

Once you get to $800 you can pretty much get the maximum bonus at almost every site. By the time you’ve done Party and Pacific you’ve collected even more free dollars and if you have been doing half decent at the tables you now have a fully functioning poker bankroll. Remember that you have only ever deposited $20 and you did that only when you knew that by doing so you could cash out at least $200. Now those are pot odds I’ll take any day!!

By the time you run out of first deposit bonuses, you will almost certainly be getting reload bonus offers from some of the sites you have played at, so if you want to, you can carry on using bonuses to build your bankroll. But only some sites offer reloads – do not waste any first deposit bonus assuming you’ll be able to make it back later on a reload bonus.